John Vaccaro

... is a Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist and designer seeking to undermine normative configurations of bodies and/in spaces. He holds a professional Master of Architecture degree from the McGill University Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture where he was awarded the Ping Kwan Lau Prize in Architecture for his final design project, Rehearsing the (*) Bathroom: A Collection of Scenographic Studies, and has published work on film, gender, and space. He has also collaborated with Sheila Nadimi and Hassan Saab on the research and design of a 392-page photography book and archiving project titled Eagle Village: A Deep Mapping of Fallow Architecture (2025).


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Projects + Selected Work

    Rehearsing the (*) Bathroom


    M.Arch. Final Project
    Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture
    McGill University
    2024-25

    Advised by Andrew King
    Assisted by Alynna Gao (Urinal Matrix, Stall Matrix, Urinals from Stall, Mirror, Mirror, and Meet Me in the Men's Room ), Nikki Apostilidis (Pink Paper Curtains), and Claudia Ng (Meet Me in the Men's Room)

    Awarded the Pink Kwan Lau Prize in Architecture by the McGill Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture

     Rehearsing the (*) Bathroom: A Collection of Scenographic Studies is an autoethnographic and speculative research project developed during the final year of the M.Arch. program at the McGill University Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture. Across fifteen individual videos and performances, the project contemplates the relationship between policy, memory, and the formation of identity, asserting the gendered public bathroom—specifically the men’s room—as a political tool and preconstructed space of certainty which quietly, yet forcefully, conditions and homogenizes the/my body. Embracing the abject, or what might be considered taboo, each video attempts to destabilize assumed codes and dominant socio-spatial structures within the space through somatic and cinematic representations of embodied memories, daily rituals, and fabulated scenarios.

    Who draws the lines?
    Who decides what is Nature?

    When we enter a building, we do so through the bathroom. That is, our ability to linger in any given space is predicated on our ability to relieve ourselves. Further contextualized by an alarming increase in anti-trans policies on the table across North America today, Rehearsing doubly aims to combat the erasure of and hostility towards gender-expansive people by nurturing a deep sense of doubt around these taken-for-granted spaces.


    Video no. 01
    Ambiguous Bodies
    00:02:59
    Video no. 02
    Untitled (Blue Paper Suit)
    00:03:45
    Video no. 03
    Recalling the (*) Bathroom
    00:02:49
    Video no. 04
    Recalling the (*) Bathroom, Delaminated Scenes
    00:05:30 (Version A)
    00:01:30 (Version B, pictured above)
    Video no. 05
    Urinal Form
    00:03:09
    Video no. 06
    Recalling the (*) Bathroom, Reprise
    00:05:11
    Video no. 07
    Urinal Matrix
    00:00:37
    Video no. 08
    Stall Matrix
    00:00:37
    Video no. 09
    Urinals From Stall
    00:02:07 (Version A, pictured above)
    00:02:15 (Version B)
    Video no. 10
    Mirror, Mirror
    00:03:31
    Video no. 11
    Pink Paper Mockup
    00:03:29
    Video no. 12
    Don’t Cross the Green Tape
    00:11:45
    Video no. 13
    Free Plan Plumbing (Compilation)
    00:10:11
    Video no. 14
    Untitled (Alynna’s White Box)
    00:01:30
    Video no. 15
    Pink Paper Curtains
    00:09:11
    Final Review
    Meet Me in the Men’s Room
    00:02:07